Every 15
Seconds

Menstuff® has compiled the following information on the urban
myth that a woman is battered in the U.S. every 15 seconds.

According to a United Nations Study on the Status of Women, a
woman is battered somewhere in America every 15 seconds, usually by
her intimate partner.

There is absolutely no basis in fact for this statement. While it
has become an often-used factoid (sometimes the number is 9 seconds,
or six) it is not accurate. It is also variously reported as coming
from the FBI, Department of Justice data, the UN, the Commonwealth
Fund, or simply, "studies." The organizations referenced have never
compiled data in this fashion or issued such a statement.

The original factoid (then 17 seconds) was extrapolated from
information in this report by Murray Straus, which was compiled
nearly twenty years ago and cannot have any relevance in a discussion
of today's incidence of domestic violence.

If you choose to do your own extrapolation of this data, you will
discover an incidence of 13 seconds also applies to males, a point
which is conveniently left out of the factoid circulating today.
Again, this study is so old, and society itself has changed so much
it cannot be considered relevant in 2004.

I followed their references (often drilling down through several
layers of linkage) and found nothing related at any of the groups or
studies cited. Note they never directly link to any study or
statistical data. I was able to locate the Commonwealth Fund study,
which does not come to any conclusions about number of occurrences
related to time.

I located the United States Department of Justice: Special Reports
2002 and also found nothing related.